Carpenter Bees?

Let me admit to something. Despite running a two-part series on Carpenter Bees, I haven’t the slightest idea what a carpenter bee is. John not only knows what one is, he knows what they do, so I take his word for it. I've heard of carpenter ants (I think). But carpenter bees? I have this image of a bee with goggles and a belt weighed down with heavy tools so that you see its butt-crack every time it bends over, but apparently that’s not what it looks like. According to John, it looks just like a regular bee except instead of buzzing around and pollinating flowers and making honey, this little guy (actually female) likes eating wood. And she pollinates as well but forget the good stuff. This is all about smearing the reputation of the carpenter bee. According to my vast research on these dreaded insects (okay, I just looked it up on Google), they prefer unpainted, weathered wood, especially softer types of wood like redwood, cedar, cypress and pine. Duh. John apparently used one of these types of wood while building the beams on his house and the bees said to themselves, “Whoopee! We’re moving in with John and Linda!” Which begs the question, do bees say stuff to themselves like “whoopee,” but that’s a subject for another blog. On second thought, maybe not.

According to this same website, carpenter bees don’t mean any harm. In fact, the males don’t even possess a stinger (I’m sure there’s a sophomoric sexual entendre in here but I will NOT sink that low) and all the little hole drillers want is to provide a safe environment for their young. Also, only the female is the hole driller which also leads to a sophomoric sexual entendre but this blog is rated PG, so please get your collective minds out of the gutter or at least out of the carpenter hole. The way to eliminate them, according to the website, is to add a protective coat of paint. While this may work in reality, it didn't stop John’s imagination, so he resorted to his inner-Rambo (trust me, he has one. Check out our comic when Al goes shirtless and dons a scarf tied around his head like a headband as he eliminates weeds with a flamethrower) and pulls out the Super Soaker. Ask anyone who’s ever been splashed by a Super Soaker, that stuff hurts! It comes out in a stream so powerful it should have been part of the assault weapons ban. If it feels like that to a fully grown human, imagine what it must feel like to a carpenter bee. We did.

Have a wonderful weekend and add an extra coat of finish to those beams, okay?

Andy and John